Culture Wars: US Religion and Politics Since 1920

Catalog description

This course will explore the history of the culture wars in the United States, starting in the 1920s and continuing to the present moment. Using the framework of sociologist James Davison Hunter, who coined the term "culture wars," we will explore various fights across the 20th century at the extremes, centralizing our readings and discussions on both sides of the debate, those with an "impulse toward orthodoxy" and those with an "impulse toward progressivism." Throughout the quarter, we will discuss fights over the teaching of evolution in public schools, birth control, public school integration, the Vietnam War, and the fight over ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Reading and watching primary and secondary sources, including FBI files, television interviews, and manifestos, and through class discussion, we will immerse ourselves in the political, religious, and social dynamics that dominate the culture wars. We will explore questions such as: What are the culture wars? Where did they come from? Will they ever end? Together, using the(these?) culture wars as inflection points, we will sketch the history of religion and politics in the 20th-century United States.